Video content programs, such as TV shows and pay-per-view movies, are delivered to a viewer as a continuous data stream. Today, programs are most commonly distributed using a wireless broadcast system, or a cable system. In the first instance, the programs are broadcast over a wireless network and received at individual homes through an antenna or satellite dish. In the latter case, the programs are transmitted over cable to set-top boxes resident in the viewers' homes.
In broadcast distribution systems, there is no opportunity for interactive control of the content by the viewer. The viewer simply has an option to watch the program, change to a different program, or turn off the television. However, as consumers have learned from playing video games on their televisions, non-interactive viewing is not nearly as fun or sensory rich as interactive entertainment.
To enhance the traditional way of viewing television, there has been some effort toward the production of interactive programming content. As presently contemplated, additional interactive content is created to enhance the existing traditional program. This supplemental content is played along with the continuous video stream to enable viewers to interact with the program in a more involved manner than simply watching it. The supplemental content might, for example, ask the viewer questions about the episode, or play games with the viewer that relate to the show, or describe behind-the-scenes aspects of making the program. However, there remains a significant hurdle concerning how to create and distribute interactive programs.
Apart from the TV environment, however, computer users are familiar with interactive content on their computers. Many users own interactive multimedia CD-ROM applications that combine video, audio, pictures, text, and other content into a rich and responsive presentation. Familiar examples of interactive computer applications include games (e.g., Myst from Broderbund), educational programs (e.g., Reader Rabbit series from the Learning Company or Magic Schoolbus series from Microsoft), and home entertainment (e.g., Encarta from Microsoft).
Interactive content is also available from online services over a public network. Most notably, the Internet is emerging as a means for supplying video, sound, pictures, text, and other multimedia rich resources to a user's computer. Through the Internet, users can access a wide variety of resources that are maintained on computers located around the world.
Resources available on the Internet are most commonly presented as hypertext. "Hypertext," also referred to as "hypermedia," is a metaphor for presenting information in which text, images, sounds, and actions become linked together in a complex, non-sequential web of associations that permit a user to browse through related topics, regardless of the presented order of the topics. Hypermedia content is widely used for navigation and information dissemination on the "World-Wide Web" (WWW or Web) of the Internet. An application program referred to as a "Web browser" is normally used to retrieve and render hypermedia content from the WWW.
Despite the development of interactive entertainment in the computer sector, there has been little activity spilling over into the traditional television world. The TV environment poses a problem in that the programs are typically delivered as a broadcast of a continuous data stream, which inherently does not support interactive control. Interlacing interactive content presents a difficult design issue.
One proposed solution is a technology referred to as "Intercast technology" which is available from the Intercast Industry Group, a consortium of leading television networks, program hardware vendors, and software vendors. The Intercast technology presents both television programs and Internet data together on the same television or computer monitor, but with separate and predefined panes.
FIG. 1 shows a screen 14 (television or computer monitor) which illustrates the Intercast technology. The screen 14 is divided into panes, as represented by panes 16-18. Pane 16 contains the television program resulting from the video data. Pane 17 contains a hypermedia document, such as a Web page, that is provided by the Internet data. A third pane 18 can be used to show additional data, such as advertisements or the like.
The Internet data is combined with the video data of the television program to form a single signal that is broadcast to the viewer. The Internet data is transmitted during the vertical blank interval (VBI) between successive frames of the video data. The Internet data and video data are separated at the viewer's computer and presented simultaneously within their respective panes.
The drawback with the Intercast technology is that it rigidly adheres to the paned presentation. The television pane 16 is a self-contained pane which is dedicated to showing only the video program, and the Web pane 17 is a separately self-contained pane which is reserved exclusively for Web content. Content providers who develop the Internet data have no control over how the television program and interactive supplemental content is presented to the viewer. They can simply control how the data is presented within its own box 17. Accordingly, the content providers are significantly limited in what they can create in the way of a full interactive media event.
The inventors have developed a better way of creating and distributing interactive programming that frees the content providers of these restrictions.